Why Is Your Company Supporting Advertising Week BUT NOT Advancing Diversity Week?
One of the goals of the heavily supported Advertising Week is to introduce and attract young talent to consider advertising careers and to promote advertising as a business. For those who have attended Advertising Week, you'll recall an overwhelmingly white audience. And while the young attendees have been 65% female, consistent with college graduation trends, senior industry professionals on stage have been predominantly male. It's time to change that dynamic and invest more in advancing gender equity; retaining our community's diverse talent; and reaching, engaging and influencing Black, Latinx, LGBTQ+, veteran, differently-abled and other underserved communities that may not even be aware of media and advertising as a business and career opportunity.
This year, we're proud to host the advertising and media community's inaugural Advancing Diversity Week, in collaboration with The FQ and leading organizations to be announced.
Attracting and retaining a diverse workforce is not only an imperative in the current unprecedented competition for talent, it's statistically proven to increase business success. (See the graph above.)
Here are the facts (see below) explaining why an investment in Advancing Diversity Week is essential and why more than 50 media and advertising companies and industry leaders have committed to supporting our weeklong Advancing Diversity Week program September 20-23 targeting diverse talent within our own community plus underserved students, veterans and diverse professionals from compatible industries.
For more than a decade, advancing industry growth through diversity has been a stated purpose of MediaVillage and my personal mission, from Women in Media Mentoring Initiative and WomenAdvancing.org in 2011, to 1stFive.org in 2014, FutureofMen.com in 2016, AdvancingDiversity.org in 2017 and Advancing Diversity Hall of Honors at CES from 2018-2020. (View the 2021 Advancing Diversity Hall of Honors Inductees here.)
If your company is not among those supporting the collective marketing, media, advertising and entertainment community's diversity outreach, you should ask yourself and your leadership "why not?"
Learn more about Advancing Diversity Week at (https://week.advancingdiversity.org/) and contact Robin Wallace (robin@mediavillage.com) for panel, speaking and corporate presence opportunities.
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Jack Myers
Media Ecologist, Founder: MediaVillage and Advancing Diversity Hall of Honors Jack Myers is a media ecologist and founder of MediaVillage, the media and advertising community’s leading resource for market intelligence, education, business connection…
